TikTok’s in trouble — time to adapt your strategy to match

TikTok is becoming a social strategy headache

I have nearly two decades of history advocating for news organisations taking advantage of publishing on social platforms under my belt. Sure, I had and have misgivings about Facebook, but the general thrust of my work has always been that we need to be where the people are, and figure out what to do with the relationships we build there.

So, it’s really strange to find myself now cautioning about investing too much time and effort on TikTok because its future outside China is looking distinctly rocky right now. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this over the last couple of months, and here’s how I recommend you think about the situation:

TikTok: should news organisations be on the platform now?

TikTok is beloved of Gen Z — but a lot less popular amongst Western governments. With a US ban looming, here’s how to rethink your strategy.

One Man & His BlogAdam Tinworth

We’re nowhere near peak subscriptions yet

I do wonder about the journalism business’s obsession with “peak”. We keep talking about “peak podcasts” or “peak newsletters”, but did we ever talk about “peak magazines”?

Anyway, friend of the blog, the ever-insightful Greg Piechota, researcher-in-residence at INMA, has been looking at subscription levels in news, and his thesis is that we’re a long way off “peak subscription” yet. Sure, this will be a challenging few years for subs businesses, but there’s still plenty of headroom for growth.

Media companies have not reached their subscriptions peak

Greg Piechota, researcher-in-residence at INMA and lead of the INMA Readers First Initiative, shared his original research during the INMA Media Subscriptions Summit in Stockholm last week, updating attendees on the state of subscriptions since the pandemic.

INMAJosefin Olevik

Today’s Twitter idiocy (that actually matters)

Hey, you know that really useful function of Tweetdeck, where you can build a column of tweets by location, which is great for live news coverage and verification work?

Yes, it’s broken. Or, at least, suddenly a lot less accurate.

Good Luck Tagging Your Specific Location on Twitter Anymore

The latest in a series of Twitter cutbacks removes access to location-data firm Foursquare’s platform, meaning you can’t tag a specific place in a tweet.

PCMag UKGood Luck Tagging Your Specific Location on Twitter Anymore

Oh, and take a guess as to what happened to levels of antisemitic tweets on the platform after Musk took over? Go on, guess.

Quickies

• 📈 A handy guide to Google’s knowledge graph
• 📧 Proof that you shouldn’t change newsletter sender name unless you really have to.
• 🔎 Bing Chat answers added to Bing search. This stuff is happening fast.
• 👻 Ghost has just given publishers more control over how their newsletters appear.
• 🤖 ChatGPT can’t actually access web pages over the internet — but it behaves like it can.

Instagram founder hates what the app has become

Yeah, I can see his point…

Instagram Co-Founder Doesn’t Like What the App Has Become

“Not the Instagram we started.”

PetaPixelJaron Schneider

Totally mature and normal way to behave